The present study examined whether questions in mathematics department textbooks of junior high school are constructed according to learners’ cognitive process of understanding. The questions were classified into the following 5 categories: questions to encourage setting of learning context, questions to encourage activation of existing knowledge, questions to encourage acquisition of new knowledge, questions to encourage association of knowledge in general, and questions to encourage diverse association of knowledge. The results indicated the following 4 points on the questions in mathematics department textbooks of junior high school: (a) there were the most frequent questions to encourage acquisition of new knowledge, (b) there were few questions to encourage association of knowledge, (c) questions to encourage activation of existing knowledge and acquisition of new knowledge were not sufficiently set up before questions to encourage association of knowledge, and (d) questions to encourage association of knowledge included questions not only to encourage the association of mathematical knowledge but also to deepen the understanding of mathematical concepts by encouraging association between mathematical knowledge and everyday knowledge.

This study examines intra-individual relations between students’ experiences of reading strategy instruction and their actual strategy use, focusing on English reading strategies. In addition, we examine the moderating effects of reading motivation and self-efficacy. A survey was administered to 127 third-year students at a public secondary school. The results of multi-level analysis indicate that students tend to use strategies in which they were often instructed. The results also show that students’ experiences of reading strategy instruction and their actual use of strategies differ between students. Students with higher motivation for reading English have a strong tendency to use the learned strategies. These findings suggest the importance of increasing students’ motivation and the need to instruct students explicitly in strategies.

In this paper, we propose a model of the problem-solving process for learning Patent Act, noting that legal texts can be expressed as propositional logical structures. We also develop a learning support system that uses this model. For problems that consider combinations of legal statements, the developed learning support system retains propositional logic representations that can allow direct calculation of problem structures with restrictions. Learners using the support system can likewise assemble solutions using propositional logic. Namely, differences between correct and incorrect answers can be calculated and used as feedback to learners. In an evaluation experiment of the system, it was suggested that the learner highly evaluated the stepwise feedback and it might be possible to enhance the awareness of solving the problem based on the model proposed in this study.

In this study, students write sentences to explain phenomena occurring around them in order to confirm learned science knowledge. The students were given conditions of the description ("You can write illustration and case example as needed."). This study formed 4 student’s groups (i.e. students of one grade lower, same grade, one level older and themselves as the virtual audiences of the explanation). The purpose of this research is to clarify the relation between explaining and the degree of understanding in junior high school science lessons. As a result, a certain relation was observed between “The qualities of explanation” and “Understanding” especially in the group of students who explained to one grade lower students. According to the interview to some students, this is because they tried to use easier words instead of using science terms. Furthermore, they tend to re-learn related knowledge with their textbooks and notebooks to explain the phenomena properly compared to those who explained to one grade older students.

The purpose of this research is to develop an English teaching guidance program that generates autonomous learning and to verify the effects of the program. This is a practical study on autonomy in the classroom. While conducting the research, we (1) adopted the concept of self-regulated learning. This concept led us to focus on students’ behavior in the classroom. Three core elements were identified to promote autonomy for learners' development, "meta-cognition", "motivation", and "acquisition of learning strategies". These main elements were adapted into the guidance program to foster autonomous learning. (2) The program was given to instructors to carry out in their first-grade Junior High School classrooms. The data was collected before and after the implementation. The results show that the program verified that the above three core elements acted effectively and had a certain degree of effect to produce autonomous learning.